Polls and the Government Shutdown

“Americans have come to hold a harshly negative view of the Republican Party during the government shutdown, giving the GOP a far larger share of the blame for a political brawl that many believe is harming the economy, a new WALL STREET JOURNAL/NBC NEWS POLL found. … Participants in the poll gave the Republican Party overall its lowest marks in the history of Journal polling, which goes back to 1989: More than twice as many hold a negative view of the GOP as a positive one,” the Wall Street Journal’s Neil King reports.” According to http://abcnews.go.com

Also, 70% of Americans said Republicans were putting politics ahead of what was best for the country while only 51% said this about Obama. It’s also odd that Obama’s favorability rating has actually gone up in the face of this train wreck. BUT, hold on, the IPSOS poll showed that Obama is not doing so well – Approve 40, Disapprove 54 of Obama’s performance.

Interestingly Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the new darling of the Tea Party, reacted to the poll by saying “I’ll note that that poll was very heavily weighted with an awful lot of Democrats with an awful lot of Obama supporters and 20 percent of the people polled were government workers.”

I’ve scrutinized the sample and can report that if you remove Democrats sampled in the Wall Street journal poll 58 percent of the non-Democrats (Republicans and Independents) said that the shutdown is having a “great deal” or “quite a bit” of an effect on the American economy. So the GOP still has to worry.

The interesting thing about polls is that you can always challenge the accuracy and move on with your preferred policy. That’s what Cruz is doing and where he’s leading the Republicans.

I believe that he should. After all, the Republicans have a policy agenda, which they believe is right and the best for the country. It would be unconscionable if they gave up their principles because some poll shows that the GOP is blamed more for the government shutdown than Obama.

However, let me point out that the Republicans also believed until the last votes were counted that Mitt Romney would win the 2012 election. The reason? The polls, which showed Obama ahead, where deemed inaccurate because there were too many Democrats in the sample. Rush Limbaugh and even Carl Rove, the “architect” of the George W. Bush victories, strongly argued that the polls were wrong. Wishful thinking does not help you much if you’re planning strategy. Many a general has lost a battle and even a war by not believing the intelligence reports about the strength of their enemy.

What’s more, “Disapproval of congressional Republicans’ budget wrangling after a weeklong shutdown has shot up to 70 percent, with 51 percent disapproving “strongly,” according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Another very interesting development is how Americans feel about a third party. Gallup reports that, “Amid the government shutdown, 60% of Americans say the Democratic and Republicans parties do such a poor job of representing the American people that a third major party is needed. That is the highest Gallup has measured in the 10-year history of this question. A new low of 26% believe the two major parties adequately represent Americans.”

That’s a significant new benchmark and should be sobering to both dominant parties. Of course, we know that it is a very difficult reach for third parties to actually get on the ballot and then win seats. However as a measure of confidence in the current parties, I think this is a desperate cry by Americans for the parties to behave differently.

I think it’s time for the Democrats and Republicans to listen to more than their narrow, district, gerrymandered constituencies. We are a nation not a bunch of small, warring tribes. That would be Iraq.